To start with, you’ll need to open the Terminal application (located in Applications/Utilities, or just type Terminal into Spotlight). Just type in the following commands and press enter to execute them. Once you’ve typed in your commands and tweaks, you need to restart the Dock for them to take effect. To restart the Dock, type the following command into Terminal:

killall Dock

To disable the tweak, just run the “Reversal Command” for that code.

1. Enable the Suck Minimize Effect

When you first turn on your Mac, you can choose from the default “Genie” minimize animation or change it to the simp “Scale” animation. There’s actually a hidden effect called “Suck.” To enable it, type in the command:

defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect suck

If you think Suck sucks, just change it back in System Preferences > Dock.

2. Enable iTunes Track Notifications

There are a ton of third party applications that put iTunes track notifications in the menubar, but you can have similar functionality in the dock by entering the following command in Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.dock itunes-notifications -bool TRUE

Now the iTunes icon will have a little bubble showing the artist and song title at a song change. If you start getting annoyed, just type in the same code and change true to FALSE.

3. Make List View Stacks like Grid View Stacks

Stacks are the nifty little fold icons that hangout near the trash icon in your dock. By default, the List view can look a little bland. The following command can zazz it up a little bit.

defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool YES

To change it, just change yes to NO.

4. Line Up the Dock

The standard Dock preferences allow you to put it on the bottom of the screen, the left and right sides, but nothing else. You can position the Dock to your liking with the following commands in Terminal.

Pin the Dock to the Right:

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string "start"

Pin the Dock to the Left:

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string "end"

Pin the Dock to the default position (center):

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string "middle"

Personally, I have my dock on the left of my screen at the start since the menubar file system is always at the top left of the screen. But that’s my reasoning. Hopefully, with these Terminal commands you’ll be able to mix things up to your liking, and maybe wow your friends with your cool Terminal skills.

Got a question you’d like us to answer, tip or trick you’d like to tell us? Let us know in the comments, or post it on our Facebook wall. Don’t forget to follow us onTwitter and add us to your circles on Google+.

We’re holding TWO contests today for Thursday Smursday!

Contest #1: It’s simple, pick a number between 1 & 1,000 and 10 entrants will win a Schoshe snapShield iPad 2 case. So, if you have an iPad 2, enter!

Contest #2: Same thing, pick a number between 1 & 1,000 and 10 entrants will win an iPad 1 case! We can still give the iPad 1 some love, right?

Questions? Leave us a comment or comment on our facebook page!

Hopefully that made your Monday somewhat happy!

Our entire company gets together once a quarter, and our quarterly meetup was Wednesday. We played a roudy rendition of Minute to Win it. Here’s one of the vids, it’s pretty amazing.

Probably the most amazing part was how excited everyone got when Dave beat the odds and actually completed the challenge. If you’ve watched Minute to Win it, the challenges seem so easy right? Yah, I totally tried one of the challenges after the fact, it was hard! When someone wins, it’s definitely a miracle. Next time you’re bored, try this challenge. Looks so simple but is actually quite difficult.

PS: Did you know we have a youtube channel? Well ya do now, go check it out!

We’re feeling extra generous today, which is why there will be 3 Thursday Smursday winners. Yup, 3!

Here’s what you could win:

Zero Chroma iPhone 4/4S case

Zero Chroma iPad 2/3 case (smart cover compatible)

XForce 11″ MacBook Air Protective Case

Here’s how you enter:

1. Leave us a comment HERE, on the blog, with whatever you want to say for your chance to win, we wouldn’t be opposed to a joke, snarky comment or some begging or pleading.

Get extra entries by leaving additional comments with the following:

2. Let us know you like us on facebook

3. Tell us you follow us on twitter

All in all, you can leave a total of 3 comments. Winners will be chosen at random and announced at 4pm. Good luck!

And the winners are…

April Perez – Zero Chroma iPhone 4/4S CaseGary Attebury – Zero Chroma iPad 2/3 Case

Chris Sheffield – XForce 11″ MacBook Air Protective Case

Winners: please send an e-mail to marketing@simplymac.com so we can make arrangements to get your prize to you!

Congratulations to the winners and thank you so much for all of you that played!

We knew you needed a little pick-me-up for your Thursday. So, now through April 30, 2012 get an 8GB ram upgrade for $49.99 when you buy an iMac or MacBook Pro with AppleCare! That’s $150 off the regular price! Score? We think so.

Don’t forget to check back here for Thursday Smursday!

Friday and Saturday, April 13 & 14, was our e-Waste event! We were beyond excited to be able to host this event for a second year in a row, and we were even happier when we received the final tallies and heard we collected 250,000 pounds of e-Waste! Way to go Utah! Without your efforts to collect and transport outdated electronics to our collection point at the Maverik Center, we wouldn’t have been able to fill up as many semi trucks as we did.

Electronic waste, or e-Waste, is simply outdated electronics. Everything from computer towers to cell phones fall under the e-Waste umbrella. On Friday and Saturday, we collected pallets upon pallets of computer towers, CRT (tube) monitors, giant TV sets, printers and filled giant boxes with keyboards, mice and other smaller electronics.

If you recycled, we hope you scored one of our awesome drink koozies! Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time to collect all the old electronics you had lying around and bringing them to our event! You helped reduce our overall footprint, reduce waste in landfills and greenhouse gas emissions, and participated in one awesome community effort!

For more pictures, visit our facebook page.

AppleCare takes your warranty, and the 90 days of phone support, out to three years from the original date the Mac was bought. AppleCare is a great service and will save you money over the life of your Mac if you run into any issues. Not only that, but if you are the kind of person who likes to sell your stuff for the new model every year or so, AppleCare helps to maintain your Mac’s resale value.

Use that extra $20 to buy yourself some cool apps from the Mac App Store, or go to lunch, add some gas to your car, the sky is the limit.

This is the iCam. While it won’t improve the photo quality of your iPhone snapshots, it will protect it from bumps, scratches, and drops. It could also be a great talking point when people ask you why your talking into your camera.

Got a favorite app or fun Mac doodad? Post it in our comments section or on our Facebook wall. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and add Simply Mac to your circles on Google+.

1. Get Started

Assuming you have iCloud and use Photo Stream, you’ll need to access your Finder’s Library folder. The easiest way to do this is to click on the Finder icon in your Dock, then click on the word “Go” from the menubar. With the “Go” menu open, press and hold down the “option” key on your keyboard. Library will appear in the list where it wasn’t before. Click on Library and navigate to Application Support > iLifeAssesManagement > assets > sub. Within this folder are all your Photo Stream photos. In the search bar, type the word “image”.

2. Keep Going

From the Kinds menu that appears, select “Image”. Next, click on “sub” from the gray bar, and then click the “Save” button under the search bar. A little diaglog box appears that lets you rename the Smart Folder we are creating and will let you add it to your sidebar. Just leave the save location as the default “Saved Searches”. This is a great option if you want quick access to your pictures from photo stream. If you want them even faster, next, I’ll explain how to add this folder to your dock.

3. Options

Right click on the Smart Folder you just created in your sidebar and select “Open Enclosing Folder” from the menu. You’ll notice you can also remove the folder from the sidebar if you don’t want or need it there anymore. Once you’ve opened the enclosing folder, you’ll see a folder with the name you gave your saved search.

Now, just click and drag it to your dock. Because it’s a folder, you’ll only be able to put it next to other folders or next to your trash. Now you have quick one click access to the photos from your Photo Stream without having to waiting for iPhoto. Unfortunately, this is a one way process, there is now way to drag photos into this folder and have them appear on your iDevice. Nevertheless, I’ve found this emensly helpful and hope you will too.

Got a question you’d like us to answer, tip or trick you’d like to tell us? Let us know in the comments, or post it on our Facebook wall. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and add us to your circles on Google+.